No, he thought, remembering his mother’s look when he told her he was going to New York. No, a man with people depending on him had no choice, often, but to hurt either them or himself—and many times, both. Barbara couldn’t be asked to place herself in a situation like that.
Besides, he reminded himself, that wasn’t what he was looking for now. That wasn’t what he needed.
He reached the subway station and took an uptown train to Columbus Circle, and not until he reached there did he raise his head and begin looking at girls.
He walked slowly into Central Park, moving in the general direction of Fifth Avenue. He walked a little self-consciously, sure that at least some of the people sitting on the benches must wonder what he was doing.
There were quite a few girls out in the park, mostly in pairs, and they paid him no attention. Most of them were walking toward the roller-skating rink, where he imagined they would have prearranged dates, or else were hoping to meet a pair of young men. He toyed with the notion of going down to the rink himself, but there was something so desperately purposeless in skating around and around in a circle to sticky organ music that he dropped the idea almost immediately. Instead, he cut up another path and skirted the bird sanctuary, without knowing what it was or what the high fence was for. When he suddenly saw a peacock step out into a glade, spreading its plumes like an unfolding dream, he stopped, entranced. He stood motionless for ten minutes before the bird walked away. Then he unhooked his fingers from the steel mesh and resumed his slow walk, still moving east.
The park was full of people in the clear sunshine. Every row of benches he passed was crowded, baby carriages jutting out into the path and small children trotting after the pigeons. Nursemaids sat talking together in white huddles, and old men read newspapers. Old women in black sat with their purses in their laps, looking out across the lake and working their empty fingers as though they were sewing.
There were a few girls out walking alone. He looked at them cautiously, out of the corners of his eyes, but there wasn’t one who looked right for him. He always turned his head to the side of the path and walked by them quickly, or else he stopped and looked carefully at his wristwatch while they passed him in the other direction.
He felt that the right kind of girl for him ought to have a look about her—a way of dressing, or walking, or looking around, that would be different from most girls’. It seemed logical to him that a girl who would let strange young men speak to her in the park would have a special kind of attitude, a mark of identification that he couldn’t describe but would certainly recognize. And, once or twice in his wanderings around the city, he had thought he’d found a girl like that. But when he walked closer to one of these girls, she was always chewing gum, or had thick orange lipstick, or in some other way gave him a peculiar feeling in the pit of the stomach that made him walk by her as quickly as he could without attracting attention.
Finally, he reached the zoo. He walked back and forth in front of the lion cages for a time. Then he went into the cafeteria and had a glass of milk, taking it outside and sitting at one of the tables on the terrace while he looked down at the seals in their pool. He was feeling increasingly awkward, as he usually did on one of these expeditions, and he took a long time over his milk. He looked at his watch again, and this time it was three-thirty. He had to look at his watch twice, because it seemed to him that he’d been in the park much longer than that. He lit a cigarette, smoked it down to the end, and found that this had taken only five minutes.
He stirred restlessly on the metal chair. He ought to get up and start moving around again, but he was haunted by the certainty that if he did that, his feet would carry him right out of the park and back to the downtown subway.
He ran his fingers over his forehead. He was sweating. There was a woman sitting at the next table, drinking iced tea. She was about thirty-five, he would have judged, dressed in expensivelooking clothes. She looked at him peculiarly, and he dropped his glance. He stood up, pushing his chair back with a harsh rattle of its legs on the terrace stones, and walked quickly down into the plaza where the seal tank was.
He watched the seals for a few minutes, his hands closed over the fence rail. The thought that he was on the verge of giving the whole thing up bothered him tremendously.
He had thought this business out, after all, and come to a logical decision. He had always abided by his decisions before, and they had invariably worked out well.
It was this Barbara business, he decided. There was nothing wrong with being in love with her—there was plenty of room for illogic in his logic—but it was bound to complicate his immediate plan. Yet, it was obvious that there was nothing he could do but go ahead in spite of it. Barbara, or a girl like Barbara, would come later, when he had settled his life down. That all belonged in a different compartment of his mind, and ought not to be crossing over into this one.
It was the first time in his life that he found himself unable to do what he ought to do, and it bothered him deeply. It made him angry. He turned abruptly away from the seal tank and marched up the steps back toward the exit beyond the lion cages.
While he’d been drinking his milk, apparently, a girl had set up a camp stool in front of the cages and was sitting on it, sketching. He noticed her out of the corner of his eye, walked up to her, and without even having bothered to particularly look at her, said challengingly, “Haven’t I seen you someplace before?”
3.
The girl was about his own age, with very pale blonde hair that was straight, cut close to her skull, and tapered at the back of the neck. She had high cheekbones with hollows under them, a thin nose, and a broad, full mouth which she did not lipstick to the corners. Her eyebrows were very thick and black, painted in with some gummy black cosmetic that looked like stage makeup more than eyebrow pencil. She was wearing flat ballet-ish slippers, a full printed skirt, and a peasant blouse. Her eyes were brown and a little startled.
Lucas realized that it was almost impossible to know what she really looked like, that she was probably quite plain, and, furthermore, that she was far from a girl he could even like. He saw that the sketch she was working on was completely lifeless. It was a fair enough rendering of a lioness, but it felt like a picture of something stuffed and carefully arranged in a window.
He felt angry at her for her looks, for her lack of talent, and for being there. “No, I suppose not,” he said, and turned to walk away.
“You may have,” the girl said. “My name’s Edith Chester. What’s yours?”
He stopped. Her voice was surprisingly gentle, and the very fact that she had reacted in any calm way at all was enough to make him feel like an idiot. “Luke,” he said, and, for some reason, shrugged.
“Are you at the Art Students’ League?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. I’m not.” He stopped, and then, just as she was opening her mouth to say something else, he blurted, “As a matter of fact, I don’t know you at all. I was just—” He stopped again, feeling more foolish than ever, and getting angry again.
Surprisingly, now, she had a nervous laugh. “Well, that’s all right, I guess. You’re not going to bite my head off, are you?”
The association of ideas was fairly obvious. He looked down at her sketch pad and said, “That’s not much of a lioness.”
She looked at the drawing too, and said, “Well, no, I suppose it isn’t.”
He had wanted to draw a hostile reaction out of her—to start an argument he could walk away on. Now he was in deeper than ever, and he had no idea of what to do. “Look—I was going to the movies. You want to come along?”
“All right,” she said, and once again he was trapped.
“I was going to see Queen of Egypt,” he declared, picking a picture as far as possible from the taste of anyone with pretensions to intelligence.
“I haven’t seen that,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind.” She dropped her pencils into her purse, put the sketch pad under her arm, a
nd folded the camp stool. “We can leave all this stuff at the League,” she said. “Would you mind carrying the stool for me? It’s only a couple of blocks from here.”
He took it without a word, and the two of them walked out of the park together. As they crossed the plaza, going toward the Fifth Avenue exit, he looked over toward the terrace in front of the cafeteria, but the stylishly dressed woman who’d sat at the next table was gone.
4.
He stood in front of the League building, smoking, and waiting for the girl to come out. He didn’t know what to do.
The thought of walking around the corner and taking a downtown bus had occurred to him. His hand in his pocket had already found the quarter for the farebox. But it was obvious by now that he’d picked on a girl not very many boys could be interested in, and that if he walked out on her now, he’d be hurting her badly. This whole thing wasn’t her fault— he wished it was—and the only thing to do was to go through with it. So he waited for her, flipping the quarter angrily in his pocket, and in due course she came out.
By now he was feeling ashamed of himself. She came out quickly, and when she saw him, she smiled for the first time since he’d met her—a smile that transformed her face for a moment before she remembered not to show relief at his still being there. Then she dropped her eyes in quick decorum. “I’m ready.”
“All right.” Now he was annoyed again. She was so easy to read that he resented the lack of effort. He wanted someone with depth—someone he could come to know over a long period of time, someone whose total self could be unfolded gradually, would be always interesting and never quite completely explored. Instead, he had Edith Chester.
And yet it wasn’t her fault. It was his, and he ought to be shot. “Look—” he said, “you don’t want to see that phony Egyptian thing.” He nodded across the street to where one of the expensive, quality movie houses was showing a European picture. “How about going to see that, instead?”
“If you want to, I’d like that.”
And she was so damned ready to follow his lead! He almost tested her by changing his mind again, but all he did was to say “Let’s go, then,” and start across the street. She followed him immediately, as though she hadn’t expected him to wait for her.
She waited at the lobby doors as he bought the tickets, and sat quietly beside him throughout the picture. He made no move to hold her hand or put his arm on the back of her seat, and halfway through the picture he suddenly realized that he wouldn’t know what to do with her after it was over. It would be too early to take her home and thank her for the lovely evening, and yet too late to simply leave her adrift, even if he could think of some graceful way of doing it. He was tempted to simply excuse himself, get up, and walk out of the theater. Somehow, for all its clumsiness and cruelty, that seemed like the best thing to do. But he held the thought for only a few seconds before he realized he couldn’t do it.
Why not? he thought. Am I such a wonderful fellow that it’d blight her life forever?
But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t what he was, it was what she was. He could have been the hunchback of Notre Dame and this same situation would still exist. He had put her in it, and it was up to him to see she wasn’t hurt as the result of something he’d done.
But what was he going to do with her? He chain-smoked angrily through the rest of the picture, shifting back and forth in his seat.
The picture reached the scene where they’d come in, and she leaned over. “Do you want to go now?”
Her voice, after ninety minutes of silence, startled him. It was as gentle as it had been when he first spoke to her—before the realization of what was happening had quite come home to her. Now, he supposed, she’d had time to grow calm again.
“All right.” He found himself reluctant to leave. Once out on the street, the awkward, inevitable “What’ll we do now?” would come, and he had no answer. But he stood up and they left the theater.
Standing under the marquee, she said, “It was a good picture, wasn’t it?”
He pushed the end of a cigarette into his mouth, preoccupied. “Do you have to go home now, or anything?” he mumbled around it.
She shook her head. “No, I live by myself. But you’ve probably got something to do tonight. I’ll just catch a bus here. Thank you for taking me to the movie.”
“No—no, that’s all right,” he said quickly. Damn it, she’d been expecting him to try and get rid of her. “Don’t do that.” And now he had to propose something for them to do. “Are you hungry?”
“A little.”
“All right, then, let’s go find some place to eat.”
“There’s a very good delicatessen just around the corner.”
“All right.” For some reason, he took her hand. It was small, but not fragile. She seemed neither surprised nor shocked. Wondering what the devil had made him do that, he walked with her down to the delicatessen.
The place was still fairly empty, and he led her to a booth in the back. They sat down facing each other, and a waiter came and took their orders. When he left, Lucas realized he should have thought of what would happen when he came in here with her.
They were cut off. The high plywood back behind him separated them from the rest of the room. On one side of them was a wall, and on the other, barely leaving people clearance to slide in and out of the booth’s far seat, was an air conditioner. He had let himself and the girl be maneuvered into a pocket where they had nothing to do but sit and stare at each other while they waited for their food.
What was there to do or say? Looking at that hair-do and the metallic pink polish on her nails, he couldn’t imagine what she could possibly talk about, or like, that he could find the faintest interest in.
“Have you been in the city long?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”
That seemed to be that.
He’d thrown his cigarette away, somewhere. He knocked a fresh one out of the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it, wishing the waiter would hurry up so they could at least eat. He stole a glance at his watch. It was only six o’clock.
“Could—could I have a cigarette, please?” she asked, her voice and expression uncertain, and he jumped.
“What?” He thrust the pack out clumsily. “Oh—gee, Edith, I’m sorry! Sure—here. I didn’t . . .” Didn’t what? Didn’t even offer her the courtesy of a cigarette. Didn’t stop to wonder whether she smoked or not. Treated her as if she was a pet dog.
He felt peculiarly embarrassed and guilty. Worse, now, than ever before.
She took the cigarette and he lit it for her quickly. She smiled a little nervously. “Thank you. I come from Connecticut, originally. Where’re you from, Luke?”
She must’ve known how I felt about her, he was thinking. It must have been sticking out all over me. But she let me go on, because . . . Because why? Because I’m the man of her dreams?
“New Jersey,” he said. “From a farm.”
“I always wished I could live on a farm. Are you working here?”
Because I’m probably the first guy that’s talked to her since she got here, that’s why. I may not be much, but I’m all she’s got.
“I am for the time being. I work for an espresso house down in the Village.”
He realized he was starting to tell her things he hadn’t intended to. But he had to talk, now, and besides, this wasn’t what he’d planned—not at all.
“I’ve only been down there once or twice,” she said. “It must be a fascinating place.”
“I guess it is, in a way. I’m going to be starting school next year, though, and I won’t be seeing much of it.”
“Oh—what’re you going to study, Luke?”
So it came out, bit by bit, more and more fluently. They talked while they ate, and words seemed to jump out of him. He told her about the farm, and about high school, and about the espresso house.
They finished eating and went for a walk, up Central Park South and then turn
ing uptown, and he continued to talk. She walked beside him, her feet in their slippers making soft, padding sounds on the asphalt pavement.
After a while, it was time to take her home. She lived on the West Side, near the gas plant in the Sixties, on the third floor of a tenement. He walked her upstairs, to her door, and suddenly he was out of talk.
He stopped, as abruptly as he’d started, and stood looking down at her, wondering what the devil had gotten into him. The roots of her hair were very dark, he saw.
“I’ve been bending your ear,” he said uncomfortably.
She shook her head. “No. No, you’re a very interesting person. I didn’t mind at all. It’s—” She looked up at him, and dropped even the minimum of pretense that she had managed to keep throughout the afternoon and evening. “It’s nice to have somebody talk to me.”
He had nothing to say to that. They stood in front of her door, and the silence grew between them.
“I had a very good time,” she said at last.
No, you didn’t, he thought. You had a miserable time. The worst thing that ever happened to you was when I spoke to you in front of the lion cages. And now I’m going to walk down those stairs and never call you up or see you again, and that’ll be worse, I guess. I’ve really messed things up. “Look— have you got a phone?” he found himself saying.
She nodded quickly. “Yes, I do. Would you like the number?”
“I’ll write it down.” He found a piece of paper in his wallet and a pencil in his shirt pocket. He wrote the number down, put his wallet and his pencil back, and once again they simply stood there.
“Monday’s my day off,” he said. “I’ll call you.”
“All right, Luke.”
He looked down at her, thinking, No, no, God damn it, I’m not going to try and kiss her good night. This isn’t like that. This is a crazy thing. She’s not like that.
“Good night, Edith.”
“Good night, Luke.”
He reached out and touched her shoulder, feeling as though he had a stupid expression on his face. She put her hand up and covered his. Then he turned away and went quickly down the stairs, feeling like a fool, and a savage, and an idiot, and like almost anything but an eighteen-year-old boy.
American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 Page 68